By Raquel Mattson-Prieto and Adriana Merino
On Friday, October 29, 2021, graduate students, lecturers, and faculty came together to present their research and academic works in progress at the day-long SPO Research Day forum. The event took place in East Pyne 010 and went from 9:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Several of our lecturers presented on various topics within the humanities, ranging from literature, linguistics, action research in teaching, and cultural studies.
Beginning in the morning panel, Nadia Cervantes Pérez presented “¿Dos lenguas, dos religiones? Hibridismo lingüístico y cultural en el Códice Florentino.” Her research focused on the discrepancies found in translated texts in Spanish from Nahuatl.
In the afternoon panels, Gabriela Díaz-Dávalos gave a presentation on the representation of indigenous women in the media in a paper entitled “Yalitza Aparicio: La mujer indígena y su lucha ante el mundo mediático.” Andréa de Castro Melloni described the life of a Venezuelan refugee living in Brazil. Her presentation entitled “Noticias do lugar que restou,” included a carefully curated selection of photographs to depict life for refugees in a new country and memories of their homeland. Following this talk, Daniela Salcedo Arnaiz delivered a talk on dialectal variation among politicians in her presentation entitled “Who is Who in Peru’s 2021 Presidential Election Campaign: Reflections on language, identity, and politics.” The panel closed with César Romero’s paper entitled “Trans-racial Masculinities and New Affective Communities in Arguedas’s Zorros,” focused on representations of race in the Peruvian literary canon.
Together in the same panel, four lecturers presented on various topics on language and linguistics. Catalina Méndez Vallejo’s presentation, “Aproximaciones metodológicas para el estudio del ‘ser focalizador’ en el español colombiano,” showcased her research in sociolinguistic variation of Colombian and Caribbean Spanish varieties. Adriana Meriño’s research in pragmatics focused on the negotiation of meaning in cultural missteps in contexts in which Spanish is the lingua franca. Her presentation was entitled “Establishing Common Ground in Intercultural Encounters.” Raquel Mattson-Prieto discussed her research on language ideologies in Spanish L2 classrooms and heritage learner identity in a presentation entitled “Language Ideologies of Linguistic Correctness among Heritage Speakers of Spanish.” Paloma Moscardó Vallés described the current state of affairs of Spanish Language for Specific Purposes courses in the United States, in general, and at Princeton. The title of her talk was “Español con fines específicos. Panorama en EE.UU, Europa y nuestro departamento.”
In an evening panel, Perla Masi delivered the paper, “Mujeres-estrella, solitarias en su luz: poesía e historia en la obra de Magdalena Chocano,” which focused on a contemporary Peruvian poet’s reflections on language, time, and community.
The first-ever event was a huge success! Not only was it an opportunity for lecturers to share their research and academic interests with other colleagues, graduate students, and faculty in the department, but also it provided a space for dialogue, creativity, and constructive feedback from peers. The organization of the event was impeccable! Kudos to the organizing committee: Renee Congdon, Yangyou Fang, Rodney Lebrón, Alejandro Martínez Rodríguez and Oriele Benavides.
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